Stock Issues and Investment Policy When Firms Have Information That Investors Do Not Have

This paper describes corporate investment and financing decisions when managers have inside information about the value of the firm's existing investment and growth opportunities, but cannot convey that information to investors. Capital markets are otherwise perfect and efficient. In these circumstances, the firm may forego a valuable investment opportunity rather than issue stock to finance it. The decision to issue cannot fully convey the managers' special information. If stock is issued, stock price falls. Liquid assets or financial slack are valuable if they reduce the probability or extent of stock issues. The paper also suggests explanations for some aspects of dividend policy and choice of capital structure.

An Sn Application of Homotopy Continuation in Neutral Particle Transport

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the usefulness of homotopy continuation applied in the context of neutral particle transport where traditional methods of acceleration degrade. This occurs in higher dimensional heterogeneous problems [51]. We focus on utilizing homotopy continuation as a means of providing a better initial guess for difficult problems. We investigate various homotopy formulations for two primary diffcult problems: a thick-diffusive fixed internal source, and a k-eigenvalue problem with high dominance ratio. We also investigate the usefulness of homotopy continuation for computationally intensive problems with 30-energy groups. We find that homotopy continuation exhibits usefulness in specific problem formulations. In the thick-diffusive problem it shows benefit when there is a strong internal source in thin materials. In the k-eigenvalue problem, homotopy continuation provides an improvement in convergence speed for fixed point iteration methods in high dominance ratio problems. We also show that one of our imbeddings successfully stabilizes the nonlinear formulation of the k-eigenvalue problem with a high dominance ratio

Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have

This paper considers a firm that must issue common stock to raise cash to undertake a valuable investment opportunity. Management is assumed to know more about the firm's value than potential investors. Investors interpret the firm's actions rationally. An equilibrium model of the issue-invest decision is developed under these assumptions.The model shows that firms may refuse to issue stock, and therefore may pass up valuable investment opportunities.The model suggests explanations for several aspects of corporate financing behavior, including the tendency to rely on internal sources of funds, and to prefer debt to equity if external financing is required. Extensions and applications of the model are discussed.

The Faber polynomials for annular sectors and an application to the iterative solution of linear systems of equations

A conformal mapping of the exterior of the unit circle to the exterior of a region of the complex plane determines the Faber polynomials for that region. These polynomials are of interest in providing near-optimal polynomial approximations in a wide variety of contexts. The work of this thesis concerns the Faber polynomials for an annular sector {z : R ≤ |z| ≤ 1,0 ≤ | arg z| ≤ π}, with 0 < 0 < π and is contained in two main parts. In the first part the required conformal map is derived, and the first few Faber polynomials for the annular sector are given in terms of the transfinite diameter, p, of the region and two parameters a and b. These three numbers are determined numerically. We also give the Faber series for 1/z and improve upon a bound given in the literature for the norm of the Faber projection, ||xn||- In the second part of the thesis we give a new hybrid method for the iterative solution of linear systems of equations, Ax = b, where the coefficient matrix, A, is large, sparse, nonsingular and non-Hermitian. The method begins with a few steps of the Arnoldi method to produce some information on the location of the spectrum of A. Our method then switches to an iterative method based on the Faber polynomials for an annular sector placed around these eigenvalue estimates. An annular sector is thought to be a useful region because it can be scaled and rotated to enclose any eigenvalue estimates bounded away from zero. Some examples will be exhibited and we will compare existing methods with ours

Conservative Decisions Guided by the Anterior Cingulate Cortex

A commentary on Decision threshold modulation in the human brain by Domenech, P., and Dreher, J. C. (2010). J. Neurosci. 30, 14305–14317. When faced with a visual stimulus, how does our brain process sensory information to decide which action to take? Only in the last 10 years have researchers begun to unravel the neural bases of such perceptual decisions (Heekeren et al., 2004; Gold and Shadlen, 2007). A popular theory holds that dedicated neural circuits achieve this by accumulating evidence from the environment until they reach a threshold an

Real Time Simulation and Experimentation of Smart Grid Control using an FPGI-based Controller

Smart Grids consist of multiple controls, computers, and new technologies and equipment that operate distributed renewable energy resources and energy storage devices, monitoring systems, and smart meters. Advanced control is utilized to manage real-time pricing, flexible loads, solar, wind, and many forms of energy storage, and microgrid management. Distributed and fast control routines are essential for an optimal system operation to manage the smart grids efficiently. The control design and development require adequate experimentation and validation due to the significant rule that plays the smart grids’ control in energy management, grid security, and economic benefits. Therefore, it is essential to develop real-time simulation via control hardware in the loop (CHIL)-based strategies. This research focuses on developing a CHIL testbed to test power management and monitoring strategies. CHIL is a powerful technique for validating and demonstrating systems rigorously and dynamically that is not achievable with traditional simulation and testing methods

Three essays on trade costs and national borders

Individuals of the same country buy and sell from each other far more than they do with individuals of a different country. A cost is associated with exchanging goods and service across national boundaries. Economists have had difficulty, however, in reconciling the small observable trade frictions with the very large trade reducing effect of borders. In the first chapter of this thesis, we propose an explanation which explains a great deal of the border puzzle between the United States and Canada. Few observable trade frictions exist which prevent the buying and selling of goods across this border, yet Canadian provinces and American states trade far more with themselves than they do with each other. Using a novel data set on Facebook friendship connections between North American regions, we uncover a substantial home bias in social linkages between the United States and Canada. Simply put, Canadians and Americans do not know each other very well. Social networks are important for trade in that they reduce information costs and increase the efficacy of informal trust mechanisms. We find that including social linkages in a gravity model substantially mediates the effect of the US-Canada border on trade. In the second chapter of this thesis, we focus on how trade costs are formed. Workhorse models of international trade typically assume, for great simplicity, that trade costs are exogenous to trade. We present a model in which the act of trading affects the cost of trade and vice versa. We focus on the trade cost associated with informal trust mechanisms. A great deal of evidence exists which shows that ceteris paribus, countries that trust each other trade far more with each other. In our model, trust is a necessary condition for trade to exist, but trust can only be formed through repeated interaction. This creates a supermodular game between would-be traders of the same country. Broadly speaking, two equilibria exist in this game. One with trust and trade, and one without trust and without trade. This framework highlights the importance of trade missions as a coordinating device. In the final chapter, based on a joint work, we assess the welfare implications of political separation. Because borders dramatically reduce trade, what happens when national borders are created when they once did not exist? The focus of this chapter is on the Basque Country in Spain, in which there is a strong pressure for full political separation. While it is certainly difficult to say what exactly would happen to the cost of trading between the Basque Country and the rest of Spain if political separation occurred, we use the cost of trade between Portugal and Spain as a benchmark. That is, we ask what the welfare implications would be if the cost of trade between the Basque Country and the rest of Spain were equal to the cost of trade between Portugal and Spain. We find that increasing trade costs in this manner would decrease the Basque Country's real income by more than 12%

A Method for the Preparation of Differentiated transtrans-1,2-Diol Derivatives with Enantio- and Diastereocontrol

We describe a synthetic sequence that allows for the preparation of optically active $trans$-1,2-diol monosilyl ether derivatives from ketones, providing a new means for retrosynthetic simplification of differentiated diol and polyol targets. The sequence involves silyl enol ether formation, Shi asymmetric epoxidation, and then regio- and stereospecific addition of hydride, methide, or higher alkylide. The tactical combination presented has not been integrated in synthetic problem solving, so far as we are aware, but has promise for broad application.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog